he State Department,
February 1, knocked
down an Indian
newspaper report
that the Obama
administration was considering a
re-merger of the India and Pakistan desks, also dismissing the
rumor that the office of the Special
Representative for Afghanistan
and Pakistan would either be
scrapped or absorbed into the
South Asian and Central Affairs
Bureau headed by Assistant
Secretary Nisha Desai Biswal.

Senior administration officials
and diplomatic observers, including several erstwhile State Department and National Security Council officials, ridiculed the contention in the report that such a
merger would return US policy to
a re-hyphenation vis-à-vis India
and Pakistan, saying “it went out
the door” decades ago with the
demise of the Cold War.

At the daily briefing, State Dep-artment spokesman John Kirby —asked if Secretary of State John FKerry was considering wrappingup the SRAP office — said, “I knowof no such plans to do so.”When asked if he would “takethe question” meaning if he wouldcheck and provide a more detailedor specific answer, Kirby bristledand said: “No, I am not going totake the question… I know of nosuch plans to do so.”When the reporter persisted andasked if that meant “there is noplan to merge SCA,” Kirby shotback, “That’s what I just said.”Earlier, senior administration officials had told India Abro-ad, “We would strongly steer you away from the premise ofthis report.”They said it was highly unlikely that such a merger wouldtake place with just a year to go in the administration and thatit would “be left to the next administration to make anychanges.”They acknowledged that there may have been some think-ing on these lines when, in July 2014, Kerry formallyannounced that SRAP, Ambassador Jim Dobbins, wouldretire and his deputy Dan Feldman would succeed him. Butthey explained that any such consideration was nixed when,in November, Ambassador Richard Olson, who had served inKabul and most recently as the US envoy toPakistan, succeeded Feldman. The experienceand gravitas he brought to the office in hisown low-profile way would not warrant anychange of either the SRAP office being closedor merged into the SCA.

What the officials and diplomatic observersfound particularly irksome in the newspaperreport was that if there indeed was such amerger, US policy would be re-hyphenatedwith regard to New Delhi and Islamabad. Thereport quoted former foreign secretary andex-national security adviser Shiv ShankarMenon as saying that ‘it looks like a re-hyphenation of the India-Pakistan equationthat is not in our interest.’One official told India Abroad that the so-called hyphenation was “a relic of the past andeven if SRAP were to be absorbed into SCA,although there are no such plans, the hyphen-ation obsession has been long gone — waybefore the SRAP office was set up for whollydifferent reasons and not just to have separateIndia and Pakistan offices.”According to the official, “It was essentially to devote moreattention and resources to the Afghanistan problem and thelinkages that involved Pakistan.”“The US-India relationship is in a different league altogeth-er,” the official reiterated, “and merger or non-merger, any ‘re-hyphenation’ has absolutely no merit.”Donald Camp, former principal deputy secretary of state forSouth Asian Affairs and ex-director of the India/South Asiadesk at the National Security Council, described the report as“weird and poorly sourced.”“It is very wrong to suggest, as this does, that a merger —when and if it occurs — would in any way be a re-hyphen-ation,” he argued. “Amongother errors, it is wrong to saythat dealing with India andPakistan on its own terms,rather than in an ‘Indo-Pakformat’ crystallized only withthe formation of SRAP.”“It is similarly wrong to sug-gest that a merger of Afghani-stan and Pakistan — when andif it occurs — back into theSCA bureau is in some way are-hyphenation of India andPakistan,” he added.

Sadanand Dhume, residentscholar and head of the SouthAsia program at American En-terprise Institute, agreed withCamp’s views and told IndiaAbroad that there continued tobe a deep misunderstanding inNew Delhi about “the meaningof de-hyphenation.”“It’s about the US abandon-ing an artificial parity betweenIndia and Pakistan, or Washi-ngton no longer viewing its tieswith India in large part th-rough a Pakistani prism. Thistook place a decade ago,” hesaid. “De-hyphenation nevermeant Washington ending no-rmal diplomatic relations withIslamabad, or abandoning therecognition that Pakistan too isa part of South Asia.”

Case for a merger without re-hyphenation

Alyssa Ayres, former assistant deputy assistant secretary
of state for South Asian Affairs
and now a senior fellow,
The de-hyphenation, she said, had begun in 2005 with the
beginnings of the negotiations on the US-India civilian
nuclear deal. Camp also argued that the nuclear deal was a
tangible example of the death of hyphenation.

But Ayres felt it made sense to wrap up SRAP and absorb
the Pakistan and Afghanistan desks into SCA under a single
official. There are “models within the State Department
where a special representative and special envoys who reports
to the regional assistant secretary and the various country
desks are housed under a regional bureau,” she told India
Abroad.

“It’s also worth noting that the India officehas grown significantly in the last six, sevenyears, reflecting the up-tempo of bilateralwork,” she added. “I believe it was four peoplethen. Today it is a stand-alone office — soNepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh are now aseparate office of their own — and probablyhas closer to 20 people.”In 2014, when Kerry announced Dobbins’retirement, Ayres had argued that “this is asgood a time as any, given the reduced role ofthe US and the changing international pres-ence in Afghanistan today, not to mention inthe coming years, to fold the special represen-tative role back into the regional bureau ofSCA Affairs.”“Doing so,” she had predicted, “will permitbetter policy coordination within the StateDepartment and across the US governmenton South and Central Asia.”‘They remain joined at the hip’Stephen Cohen, Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution, and the doyen of South Asia experts in DC, told India Abroad, “Some people were fooled by de-hyphenation and thought that the US had either abandoned Pakistan or had put India ahead ofPakistan, but we’ve strong interests in ‘normal’ — that is no war — India-Pakistan rela-tions, in the disposition of nuclear weapons, and in India’s and Pakistan’s prosperity.”“De-hyphenation made it possible to appear to be treating the two separately and was agood idea,” Cohen said, “but they remain joined at the hip.”“Historically, it was the Mughal empire that created ‘Hindoostan,’ then the BritishEast India Company took it over, and tragically both India and Pakistan believe thatthey are each the legatee,” Cohen said. “(Field Marshal Sir Claude ‘The Auk’)Auchinleck told me, when I interviewed him 50 years ago, that the division betweenthe two was South Asia’s greatest tragedy and Britain’s greatest failure, we are all livingwith this catastrophe now.”He added, “Changing labels will not change fundamental US interests. One of these isthe peaceful evolution of a ‘normal’ Pakistan. This perhaps is the most important strategicinterest that the US and India now have in common, as many Indians now understand.”

Departing from security guidelines and protocol — in what was seen as a nod to a warm approach to India — President Barack Obama had travelled with Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the latter’s visit to Washington, DC in 2014.

PETE SOUZA/WHITE HOUSE

‘The US-India relationship is in a different league altogether,’Obama administration officials tell Aziz Haniffa,dismissing a report suggesting re-hyphenation.